Новости за 01.08.2015

Take some dark-skinned, agile, desperate young migrants. Add queues of irate lorry drivers and frustrated holiday-makers. Stir in striking French ferry-workers. And then garnish with populist politicians pontificating about how the UK is being swamped with illegal immigrants and talking of sending the British Army to sort out the situation. This recipe, and the slight variant on it described today by Donald Armour of the Freight Transport Association, is for a perfect storm, or maybe a perfect swarm. Читать дальше...

Save our allotments!

Real men come from Glasgow, and, as a son of that finest of cities, certain activities are forever subject to self-denying ordinance: voting Tory; eating greens; watching cricket.

As one whose 55th birthday looms like an iceberg through Arctic fog, I read last week’s reports of the “controversial” study alleging that the male menopause really exists with all the enthusiasm that a goose would bring to the news that Strasbourg pie was about to be banned by EU law. At last, I thought, someone understands us.

It has been a good summer for the pound, or indeed for Britons heading abroad. The pound ended the week above $1.56, which is decent enough, though far short of the levels before the financial crash of 2008. But against the euro it is around €1.41, pretty much the best level since late 2007. For anyone going to Europe these are good times.

The village scribe, you might imagine, is pretty much out of a job in the West, in the 21st century, but my young friend has never been so busy. She has a skill that others seek out, on important occasions, notably weddings. She can take a few words, and make them really beautiful – not with her prettily modulated speech, but with her handwriting.

Poor old Cecil. Such a nice lion. Shot to death with an arrow fired by an American dentist. Not the end you would wish for him. Still, the global outrage that followed has been spectacular. Cecil’s death has played on the world’s heart strings like a manic harpist: the St Sebastian de nos jours.

Oh, the travails of a Republican grandee in this mind-bending American political summer of 2015. First there’s Congress, where your party has comfortable majorities in both House and Senate, but where Republicans have been spending less time of late fighting President Obama than fighting each other. And then there’s the battle for next year’s presidential nomination.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but being called "a virus" by the general secretary of a mid-sized union? That really is beyond the pale. When Liz Kendall appeared on Newsnight last week she said the CWU's description of Blairites was "offensive", but then it's far from the only potentially offensive term in the air of late.

The deal between the US and Turkey which will allow American bombers to use Incirlik airbase while Turkey takes action against Islamic State (Isis) looks stranger and stranger. When first announced over a week ago, US officials spoke triumphantly of the agreement being “a game-changer” in the war against Isis. In fact, the war waged by Turkey in the days since this great American diplomatic success has been almost entirely against the Kurds, at home and abroad.

Parkinson’s Law declares that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. But its author, the British historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson, coined a second less well-known adage. Parkinson’s Law of Triviality took the example of the committee asked to approve a new nuclear reactor, a new bike shed for the clerical staff and a rise in the price of coffee in the canteen. It asserted that people will always spend most time talking about the smallest issue, because the big one is generally beyond their comprehension. Читать дальше...

Being attacked by a gull can be an unpleasant business. Herring gulls, in particular, can do serious damage with their razor-sharp, two-inch beak, 1.4 metre wingspan and talons as they dive towards you at around 65kpm.

To read some of the more alarmist reports of the explosion in the British seagull population, and its increasing propensity to aggression, it might be thought the whole of the south coast – if not the whole of Britain – had descended into some sort of Hitchcockian nightmare.

For four days last week, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) played host to what might seem an unlikely exhibit: Kanye West’s latest music video. The promo for twin tracks “All Day” and “I Feel Like That”, from Kanye’s forthcoming album Swish!, was filmed by Steve McQueen, the director of the Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave, and premiered at Paris Fashion Week in March.

The Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, can expect another disturbed weekend unless he switches off his smartphone. He has managed to antagonise doctors so significantly over his plans to implement a seven-day working week that it inspired a social media campaign against him.

It took almost four decades to complete at a cost of over £500m and faced a barrage of criticism for its modernist red-brick design from figures including Prince Charles.

Shortly after watching BBC3's rather melancholy documentary on Jane Park, the 17-year-old lottery winner who won £1 million, then bought a chihuahua, a Louis Vuitton handbag – the dog later curling a poo into its silk lining – and a boozy extended girls' holiday in Magaluf, I began buying Lottery tickets again.

This week, allow me to quote myself: "I want to send him song lyrics. Can't stop smiling." This was the very cringeworthy note I wrote on my phone at 8.59am on Wednesday 4 March. The time of the note is a clue to the fact that I wasn't drunk – I never drink that early during the week – and the date tells me that it's nearly five months since I met my boyfriend.

Wunderkind, from the German 'wonder child'. Can we say that Sam Mendes, 50 today, was one? Yes, on the face of it; a First in English from Cambridge, a cricketing Blue, directing in the West End at 24, running a theatre (the Donmar Warehouse) at 25. But his was no bright spark doomed to flare and dim; this cricketer enjoys the long game.

Take my wife… Please. That was the classic marital gag in the bad old days, but times have changed. Her Indoors has become Her On-stage – with a boom in successful female stand-ups meaning there are more comedy couples on the circuit than ever before.

Recent global economic headlines have been alarming, with Greece almost going bust and China's stock market collapsing. But how do they affect your finances? Tom Stevenson, investment director at Fidelity Worldwide Investments, said it's good to be aware of what's going on in the world but, for investors, it's more important to be conscious of the long-term themes in national economies around the world.

Have you checked your pension lately? A lot of people haven't, which means they may be sleepwalking into problems in later life. According to the insurer Aviva, nearly two-thirds of people aged over 45 haven't checked the performance of their pension, meaning around 10 million retirement savings schemes are at risk of underperforming.

Fidelity China Special Situations has had a fair amount of bad publicity since its launch in 2010, much of it poorly informed in my view.

With the Community Shield tomorrow and the football season kicking off properly next week, there's good news for sofa fans. Football is getting cheaper to watch on TV: each game costs, on average, 20 per cent less than last year, reckons Comparethemarket.com.

If you decide to cut your child out of your will, isn't that your right? Not if a controversial Court of Appeal judgment this week is anything to go by.